Student Song

Ask me difficult things, the things
that make the class stop so I can
start again.
                                What is she talking about?
Things you must come to know
Things I wish you could see
Things I wish on when I plan what to teach that day.
Things you will realize years from now
years from her and I
having this private talk in a room of twenty.

Invasion of the Summer High Schoolers

Conversation

Panda or Jamba is the decision.
I'm so dehydrated I need Jamba.
Hopefully you don't want Subway
I want Panda anyway.

Observation

Axe hangs heavy cutting the senses
of anyone within five feet of the table
of faces surrounding a guitar out of a case.
Gently strumming No Woman No Cry
shirtlessly watching the girls in flip flops
as the reverse siren song fails.

What I want to say when anyone asks how I am doing

I am the flat basketball that never gets the air. That new red playground ball that got impaled on the bush during kickball at lunchtime recess.

Yesterday was a hard day, today is a new one. Tomorrow will be something else. I define myself by failure, I define myself by not being who I want to be. Can one develop self-confidence when one does not know who he is?

How am I doing?

 I am thinner and in blessedly better shape than five years ago; my blood pressure is manageable. I look better than I have since the Clinton Administration. I have more hair on my back than I think I ever did on my head, even in the Mr. Sensitive-Pony-Tail-Natalie-Merchant-is-a-genius-year.

How am I doing?

When I hear a noise, I jump. When people look at me I think they will attack me. My school is closing and there isn't anything I can do about it. I hear angry voices of which one is my own one is dead and one ceased talking to me years ago. I'm not alone in wanting to beat the living hell out of 50% of the people I see, am I?

How am I doing?

I know I'm a mess but don't know where to start cleaning. I know clocks are ticking but I don't know what time it is. I know other people are dependent on me but I have to get my own mask on first. I know that the fire alarm was pulled but I don't know how to get out of this building.

 How am I doing?

I regret being in this teeming jungle of neuroses. I  regret abuses of my childhood or my adulthood. I regret lies I have told myself or others. I regret being weak. I regret thinking my friends and a wife whose talents and beauty are beyond my simple powers of description will run away from me at high speed if I say what I want to in answer to their question of how am I doing.

Grape Soda

Walking down Court Street to the west
toward some strange place called Downtown.
In tee shirts and small shoes we arrived
at Seatons. We bought meat, grape soda and
cigarettes with Dad's money.
The walk took so long on short legs fueled by
grape soda, pockets stuffed with smokes, mouths
filled with purple teeth.

All the houses looked larger than mine
from the outside. I had not been in them yet
being too young for a paper route. I knew the
inside of one, the house of a blonde girl
with tanned skin and funny looking teeth.
She was from New Mexico and on my soccer team
in second grade. She teased me.
My brother asked me a question about
liking I did not understand. She kissed
me once on the cheek and I picked her up
and dropped her in a garbage can.
That was as close to love as a second grader could get.

Ballsy Cello

Much better the man says
Get off that the violin says
as the violas laugh
                              skipped a beat, sorry
Playing together for the first time
in several years sounding
like it was an everyday occurance.

That's the wrong note
         can we stop I'm missing beats in my bar
1/4 vs. 1/8
in those days it was different
five parts of a whole sound
225 years in the making

twitching feet is this correct
I love the dark stuff it makes me happy inside


Serious faces betray serious frivolity
Smiles betray small mistakes
Faster with flourishes
        STOP
A little too fast
blame it on the photocopy

We're on the beginning again with
serious playing
Violas getting some action
leaning into the stand with eyes
focused across on the violin
The minuet begins a garden of sound
bounded by the ballsy cello

Small Sparrow

The white crowned is streaked sable
and looks askew at bushes tweeting
loudly for the small body thick through the
breast then flies away wings beating quickly
over the wooden fence toward
adventure unknown.

New School Meeting Time

We have no schedule.
We have smoky organization and our plans are wind.
We have readings but no textbooks that
bend student backs under heavy packs.
We have control and work together to build
unique experiences. Those readings are seeds
for thought among the students who seem
a little frightened by our enthusiasm.

They had never seen us before talking
about who we are and what we do.

We are off the map and there are monsters here
eating the future, picking fangs with last years regrets.
We are not for them and they know it.
We are strong and chanting war songs against the old.
We are making a new something.

What is this?

That small walking Boxelder knows the
secret of the early summer heat on red and
black wings. Why does it join with others
on every beautiful perch? What moves it there?
What calls it to the concrete walk
to dodge the feet of twelve year olds?

There is fear in seeing the universe move.
Any direction emptiness filled by
bogeymen and hobgoblins of the mind.
Demons who can crush your soul to the empty
blackness you see for a brief second
when the roses sway in warm south wind.

This is the fear of something larger
This is the terror of uncenteredness
Less and less time is ours to use.
Why not watch the universe move
in a pair of wings red and black
marching toward the joy of the sun?

Powerful Pasts and Weakened Futures

We leave parts of ourselves on roads
of our own making.
Roses and operas
cathedrals of stones that make the Gods blush.

Strip mined beauty, overgrown gardens
derelict churches. We own them,
pray in them, wish that
friends and lovers could rescue us.

Watching the future roll away is the soul of pain.
In our comfortable stone we watch others
tending their gardens as our vines grow
pulling down our castles as our bodies
turn to stone golems, Magic envy machines
driven by sorcery for what we do not have.

Summer Teacher

The cats settling into stout middle age.
The way hummingbirds levitate in the trees
patiently waiting for sugar water.
My legs function these bright at six mornings.
It must be summer.

The phone never rings with calls from
anyone I want to speak with.
How everyone here has a little extra
something in them that shines.
It must be summer.

How heat saps any strength to move.
How the energy is gone at 3 pm or earlier
everyday. How the mind closes up shop
puts a sign out that says back in two months.
It must be summer.

The anger at my vacation and constant
napping at disgraceful intervals.
Plan and develop or reconstitute the mind?
The annual question that means
it must be summer.

Words Heard Outside the Library

I was just thinking about you
Mr. One Eye.
Don't tell me you were thinking
about me it's
creepy and not in a good way.

I was thinking about your girl
I hurried out
of the parking lot not wishing
to hear more than
I was blessed to be cursed with.

They speak in familiar strangness
while the homeless man
sleeps in the midafternoon sun.
I walk past scared of
what failures tonight will bring me.

No immediate survivors (Thanks Alan)

Lying came so easy to you.
Take for instance the one that saw you beating
an unknown drunk with a chair because he
made the mistake of sitting next to you.
You only wrote bad checks and stole
people's clothes from a hotel in Kalispell.
That wasn't physical it was fiscal.
Why tell mom you beat someone like that?

You told me the same tales and sold me on them.
It was the unspoken thing after every slap
or glare or kick that voice calmly saying
to me or anyone who would listen I beat a man
with a chair. We were a family of malcontents
and broken things never talking about anything.
The truth I knew was to be scared of a lie.
This is how a family disintegrates.

You're the cartoon villain that keeps on giving.
Finding your obit the day before Father's Day
this year, eleven years after you died was surprising
as I never wrote one or was asked for memory.
Your obit said no immediate survivors.
Some stranger to me writing obits about
my father. Someone I never met whose name
remains unknown and voice unheard.

No immediate survivors was right.
I'm not a survivor, I'm a remnant.
A small remaining quanitity, a trace.
Dad I'm putting my bruised psyche to the wheel.

Listening to NPR in a bad mood

Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes.
This place is full
of Questionable Amusements.
Worthy substitutes strike me as
a step down into beige knowns.
It is fashionable to say the right things
and do the right things, ask the right questions.
But there is never an answer to any of it
that makes any sense to anyone
least of all me, you.
Am I worthy of a substitute? Is anyone?
I hate the politics but can't get enough of the
games and hypocrisy and the voices endlessly
wanting what they cannot have. And Clint stands
on the side saying
Deserves got nothing to do with it.

Questionable amusements on the news
and the websites, speeches to those already
willing to work and vote for this fool or for the haircut
who abandons his past for a chance at
an executive future. There is no beauty here.
Questionable amusements mean judgment
of you by someone else who has amused themselves.
Worthy substitutes are deemed by someone somewhere
to be worthy of doing but not worthy of you.
Be afraid of those worthy substitutes.
Be sure of those questionable amusements.

Pepper Shaker

When I was young I loosened the
tops on you and waited,
watching from a nearby booth as
unsuspecting diners
sat down and grabbed you.

A man with his family tempted doom
and lifted you on high
over the breakfast special plate.
The loosened top soon failed
and confetti pepper
dusted eggs, hash browns, daughters, fruit.

I expected sneezing and a
burst of laughter.
I got yelling in my father's voice
at a volume usually left
at home after he came late from the bar.

Light Blue Plastic Universe

I am the universe in light blue plastic.
Use me for knowledge use me for sport
find King Arthur on the shelf next to
football and how to border quilts.
Pockets are damnable but wallets are worse.
Give me a child who carries me free
and easy, clicking against change,
paperclips and wrappers in gentle satisfaction.

The card from the store tracks your purchase.
I track your discoveries.
The card from the store gives you access
to the same old things you bought before.
I give you access to forgotten authors
long dead waiting for new readers,
fresh voices among packaged plots.
I give you glimpses of your needs not wants.

To the Green Worm on the Rug

I gently placed you, coiled and scared
on a receipt grabbed from the kitchen table.
Did you hear the thunder of breathing
the soft echoes of padded feet
when the monster came looking at you?

The It crouched and sniffed around
the green anomaly in the beige field.
Paws gently prodding the coiled form
claws not yet extended, the monster
hesitated before she decided to eat you.

I saved you from this toying death.
Taking you outside I passed the stairs
with cobwebs and spiders, danger time,
and found a spot of dirt in the yard.
You uncoiled and crawled away.

Mets vs. Cubs 8/5/82

These gentlemen know large stadiums
not small, not intimate, not like it should be.
Not like the first time.

Nineteen Eighty Two and the Cubs
were there, terrible and I did not care.
It was a game! The green is what
I remember. You hear it so often, but
we could touch the ivy from our seats
in the second deck halfway up the first base line.

I don't know who started that game
but Jay Johnstone hit the first home run I ever saw.
The bat on a perfect plane across the shoulders
The ball a gentle, sunlit arc of white
softly landing in the basket in right center field
not caught by eager hands but by chain link.

The crowd booed someone from the Mets and
cheered when he failed, some guy from a baseball
card with a giant moustache named Kingman.
I didn't understand. Why boo one in particular?
I booed the Mets in general being a particular
child of nine, licking a wooden spoon covered in ice cream.

Rabbits in a Field

Quick! That thing is not on wing!
Pain in a screaming package of muscle
and aerodynamic perfection.

Lets run! Quick!
Ears bobbing, dodging, hopping
over the empty field.
No one sees us in our moving!
No one sees us in our moving!

Treeline! Quick!
And the shade announces we are safe from
sun and heat and airborne violence.
We are not food we are a family!
We live to run another day.

Cat Poem

My cat is gray with yellow eyes and walks
on a once broken in three places leg.
My cat sleeps sixteen hours a day
and eats every meal like he will not see another.

My cat is slow and quiet like age
but active behind the yellow eyes.
My cat is confident in safety
sleeping on visitors laps without fear.

My cat headbutts calves and cupboard doors
stumbles head first into pillows and walls.
My cat is weak and eats only special
expensive food I'm not convinced he needs.

My cat is mischief biting the hands that
feed him grooming the other cat, my beard.
My cat is not graceful and he is loud
he is altogether a perfect cat.

Watching the Giants Play the Marlins

All the Giants fans are jealous when Hanley
hits that home run and the new Marlins
Home Run Machine whirls to life.
Descended from Bill Veeck's exploding thing
at the Old Comiskey Park in Chicago
this new model has fish that glow arcing
yellow and orange on invisible hooks. 

Maybe the Giants need their own machine.
An inflatable Garcia that plays
Scarlet Begonias or St. Stephen?
Willie Mays drop kicking a voodoo doll
of Barry Bonds into McCovey Cove?
That's slightly less awesome than flying fish.
Is there a game on somewhere?

Some Person

I just spent twenty minutes talking to
a man who cried about his stepfather.
He cried about his daughter moving away
and I told him he could change himself,
that he could move from crying in bars,
crying in front of strangers who don't care.
The second time a drunk has told me I
speak from the heart, it's in my eyes he says.
The second time I replied thank you, sir.
Which is all I can say.

That man's soul is damaged by the past
That man's soul is damaged by the dollar
That man's soul is damaged by a story.
He's more a story around a person
than a person who has a story.
He doesn't hold his story he soaks
himself in it daily.
Eddie says no pleases no thank yous he
just comes in every day to get smashed.
Eddie says a piece of shit whose hand I shook.

Differences

It does not rain here like it
does in Washington.
Here it comes in torrents one
month of every year.
The Evergreen State needs grey
clouds to stay that way.

You can see it in people
the way the sun shines
the pain with which they approach
clouds rolling over
the mountains, ghostly fingers
clutching winter rains.

After a Party

The yelling starts again, this time around
Some guy who put his arm around you.
Did he or didn't he? Did he or didn't he?

Did he rub your back and talk in low tones
Unheard above the glasses on tabletops
Of eyes that see and understand too well?

The words start, the ones meaning
The argument is already halfway to silence.
Bombs and syllables crushing walls.

The volume isn't what hurts us the most
It is the tone that corkscrews into your ears
And pulls out peace, quiet, calm.

The bombs don't mean that much
The tone gives them violence and yield. 
I clutch my pillow and look at my bear.

It has brown glass eyes that never
Hold that tone in them. I try to sleep
After this small fight in this uninvited war.

Patterns

Pattern of the day ahead:
General grogginess of rising at six
The fog moves from the head to the road
When the drive starts at seven.

Classes, one after another, each a vibrant
Daily chaos in a term length container.
Meeting after, tapping pens
Waiting for others to stop talking.

Home, same, quiet and lovely
Gradual winding down with wine
Wife and cats.
Pattern of the day passed.

Purple Math Book

Purple math book on a desk in front of giggles incarnate.
We cannot stop, not with those aliens trying to explain
Things we already know, commenting on that kid
Picking his nose every day wiping it on his pants.

I never laughed like that before. Knees banging
The underside of the desk, sides ready to burst
Breathing increasingly difficult as the yelling started
From the front of the classroom.

Purple math book on a desk in the hallway can't
Be partners with Dave's anymore after today.
I couldn't stop and Dave couldn't stop
And the hallway couldn't save the teacher.

I kept writing those speech bubbles and kept
Right on laughing. So did Dave, even after his desk
Moved to face away from the window in the door.
I could see him shaking, hiding his face from the teacher.

Thank You, Mary

It's in the eyes of the people that glow

Some backwater memory of 80s radio
Of KRNA of Mark Voss and Glenn Gardner
Of KKRQ of Captain Steve and Mary of the Heartland
Who ran the metal show on Sunday nights.

I pictured her as the Dead Milkmen's Punk Rock Girl
A faceless voice soaked in anarchy
Guiding you during her day shift until
That song sets you off
                                   Can you cook? Can you sew?
                                   Well I don't want to know!
Wait! Is that a
                                    That's not what you need on the inside
                                   To make the time go!
Mandolin? This band only plays Aqualung!

Instant confusion on the drive down College Street
Must get home and
What? What?
                                   Roll us both down a mountain
                                   And I'm sure the fat man would win!
Call that number for the secret knowledge
What album is this on?
Benefit.
Walk back downtown, take the steps
To BJ records two at a time and buy that record.
A friend in the business called this
The Wet Dream of DJs.  


 

Hope

The next day will be better. I can't be in
The moment as too many moments of
Mine are regrets. The next moments will be
Better, joyful, filled with easy.

Backyard Frontyard

Clothesline overgrown
Tall grass and rhubarb
Peony bushes
And the grave of my first dog.

Panasonic box he had a stroke someday
I hope someone finds him and wonders why
Bones are buried with toys buried with love.

A manhole cover makes a good homeplate
For whiffle ball games. The Roe brothers had
One too. But not as good as mine they had
No trees to hit through
No leaves to inhibit fly balls that would land
On Mr. Stimmels bank.

Not knowing property lines we would
Gleefully use his drive as an end zone
Bleacher combo target to hit to to run
To always yelled at always scoffing always
Mrs. Stimmel yelling always but not him.

I found a picture of him once a coach
Of a womans softball team it was him
In face but not in body God it was
Thin but that chin. That chin would break granite
Watching us made the chin wag, smile, glow, beauty.

Alcatraz

The island is hard
How can concrete sprout Western Gulls
In the ruins of the Warden's House?
The city is there, immediate, taunting.
Women bars and bookstores on every corner.
What did they think, looking at Coit Tower
Or the bridge?

What would be different for them? The Tower is the same
I climbed up this morning, complaining
About hips and knees. Feeling the pain
In my calves on the way down.
God how boring this must have been and how
Expensive, 400 or so cons on an island.

Animals in a cage. This was the city zoo.
Look and you might see
Kreepy!
Whitey!
Scarface!
Birdman!

Here we see the con in its natural habitat, playing
Contract bridge.
What?
Hardened killers playing contract bridge?
That's what old couples did in the 1950s in bad TV shows
Until Dad had too much to drink and embarrassed himself
And Mom by telling the guests they were horseshit.
That sort of honesty was always around the crooks and cheats
Playing contract bridge, looking at the city.
They were old couples married to the nights
When the doors closed
And the city glowed through bars
Taunting, dressing down in quiet thoughts
This is what you gave up when you
Stole
Muscled
Shot
Killed
A picture colored from memory
Never experienced first hand.

I didn't know

Why?
What happened?
How did it come down that you could not tell us?
We never talked much after I left. Your last email
Around Rachel's birthday mentioned
We
     Need to
     Connect.
You knew and never told us.

That night I got there with Terry
The smell of Winstons everywhere
Open Tums on the table next to the chair
Covered with the Bears blanket you
Wrapped yourself in while Mom
Begged you to go to the hospital.
We sat down at the kitchen table.
I thought of the day grandma died
And you called Garry at work.
The supervisor said he isn't here and you
Told him that he was. Garry's voice faint on the line:
What?
Garry, Grandma's dead.
                                               Mom: What a terrible thing
                                                          to say over the phone.
When my sister in law called, I knew some one died.
No one calls unless someone died.
                                              Karen: Are you sitting down?
I knew it was not Mom.

II.

Why?
Chicken and not ribs in the fridge
Plus quitting smoking plus exercise
Adds up to you knew something was wrong.
You had no insurance
Did you know what was happening?
Were you scared?
Mom told me you could hardly walk downstairs
Said you were freezing.
Did you know what was happening?
I slept in your chair that night finding
I could not sleep at all and looked at those Tums.
The man asked me the next day if I needed
To
See
You.

To
Say
Goodbye.

I didn't ask to see you
I didn't need closure.
Sleeping in your chair
Under your blankets
In your house
Was all the closure I needed.

Bridge

Third time across
No toll northbound

Anticipation
Past the last Presidio exit
And Fort Point
The edges fall away
Joggers, school kids mix with
Art Deco mist on that impossible color
And Alcatraz and Marin and the Pacific
And you want to stop the car and run sometimes
To the edge
And jump right off. 

Ranch Unit C

We lived out Watsonville Road on a ranch
In a half finished house (two rooms, $1500)
Surrounded by dogs and dust.
With neighbor landlords who sprinted to LA almost every weekend.
She said once I know Frank.
Sinatra?
Stallone! Even better.
The first time the power went out romantic like
We sat outside and drank beer
And talked about California
And how it was not here.

Michigan Randy was there fixing our household hurts
While his own sat untouched and creaking
When the wind blew.
He married into the landlord's family and left his family in regret
And went back to Michigan.
And Teagan moved in with daughters and swimming pool
And the landlords moved up top in the big house
And Teagan complained about the landlords
Noise and promises and damn it she makes so much noise
I can't sleep
                                                Because of the crystal
I'm clean for my kids, you know
                                                Because of the crystal the kids exist
And Teagan lived there until she died
In her jeep
In a lake up by Tahoe
She drove right in
Because of the crystal.

Santa Cruz

Why do I love this town?
This isn't a town its a collection of
Stamps with the souls printed upside down.
Pennies shining brightly nightly.
Buses with stuffed animals attached
Astronomy students with laptops attached
The Last Hippies with no attachments.

Why do I love this town?
A man not selling, not commercial
Is outside the Urban Outfitters
Calmly reading calmly watching tourists
Collecting totems of adventure for
Display in the valley towns.
His sign, his folding coffee table simple and approachable.
The sign reads
Empathy.

Why do I love this town?

Dad's Song

I mean this to be the first of a series of poems about the family. 

I.
Never be angry.
I can't remember my dad very well.
I can remember how he sounded.
He never sounded that mean or sad
But he was both, hidden where
He could watch them.
And they drove him into doing things.

I remember the envy and the hate.
I remember the sadness
More than I remember him.
He was old and a long journey ended.
Charming, angry and drunk
One following the other, taking him
Everywhere but where anyone else wanted to go.

When charming he laughed like the springtime
When angry and drunk he bellowed.
     Some examples:
Balls! (exasperation voice for mechanicals)
Bull Shit! (exasperation voice for people)
Asshole! (exasperation voice that made me laugh)
Still does maybe it's the word that does the trick.

Hardly ever said fuck or cocksucker
Those unwrapped gifts
Are my exasperation voice for him. 

II.
He
     Gave me a tape recorder once which
     Caused me to laugh at his voice.
I
     Don't know if that hurt him but he laughed
     At it himself. Or laughed at me laughing at him.
     I was nine and I did not know he
     Stole
     It
     From
     Work.
Did it matter?
Does it now?

My stapler labeled University of Iowa
Is from him. Really it is a gift from
Some random supply closet at the hospital.
Was he fired for the theft of the stapler?

III.
His friends if you can call them that
Had strange names.

Ace
     who was old with a white beard
     He mixed mashed potatoes and corn
     Which I do
     I like the colors of yellow corn on the
     Whitish background of the potatoes
     With salt and pepper and brown of the
     Potato skin. One memory of Ace.

Norb
     Worked at the cab company. Norb
     Short for Norbert. He sat next to Mom
     At Dad's funeral and said to her
    "Jesus I'm glad Mark's not here" using my
     Real name because Dad did.
     That made two of us. I stayed away
     And missed Dad's last spectacle
     And last friend

Mystery Woman
     At the funeral who paid for the casket and
     Took the American flag nicely folded
     While my mom watched open mouthed.
     Not shocked not angry but
     Understanding what she was watching
     Was what she accused him of for my entire life.
     It was right there and she looked at Mom
     With venom and thought
     The exact same thing.

"Jesus I'm glad Mark's not here."
That makes two of us.

Interview Day

I.
I'm 5 minutes early
They are twenty minutes late

On the way to the East Bay
My tire was flat and I stopped.
Paid some nice kid quatro
For some air. Didn't have to pay
But I needed to get some positive vibes
For this exercise in negativity

So, how do you
               deal with
                   defiance?

Embrace it
That kid is pissed
That student is alive
I need to find out what makes her so.
Teenagers are defiant, their beings are defiant
Adults wish for that but must show
How to make defiance work.

II.
You advertise small classes and clock
In at thirty
Small for around here
Big for those who are never here

So, how do you deal
               with a student
               who is sixteen but reads
               like a fourth grader?

You cannot deal with that student.
Ask!
Is there something to work with?
Why is the student in trouble?
What are his interests?
Can he write a paragraph?
Have a paragraph about that baseball player
Or man in his neighborhood who works
The corner store that he has known forever
Familiar subjects can breed unfamiliar words
Phrases and accomplishments.

III.
They ask questions about putting out fires
Not about instruction. They are past instruction.
Planning is done for them leaving instruction
As a one shot video
Of a lesson less than indicative
Of originality
And quality. 


 

Advertising

Authenticity of a message
That will sell
A manufactured image
Of truth that is not there
Of an identity of a mask.

But this isn't about marketing
This isn't about sales
                       (But it is)
This isn't about money
                       (But it is)
This isn't about what is needed
                        But it is
                        About
                        What is wanted

Bar Riff #2

I.
Drunk republican with a plastic bag
Fill of take out food he does not remember
Ordering

Throws his twenties on the bar
And yells about
Obama

Says it like a cuss word in church
Like evil that boils out of hollow cheeks
And the song plays
Mommy told me yes she told me 
I'd meet girls like you

II.
Kill Bill talks in sports
Football
49ers
That big fucker does this
And runs fast
That big
Hey!
What happened with that

Kill Bill talks in twice told tales
Retold
Again
Retold
For those people who do not know.

Kill Bill acts
did he really
Put a shot glass through his TV?
Slap his grandmother?
Drop kick the neighbor's terrier onto the roof
Of a passing car
And make a field goal sign?
Could anyone be that way and hold down a job
Or a life of any worth?


 

Lesson on tape

Why do I speak like that?
Fumbling over words and syllables
Like I have marbles in my mouth while
I speak into a can.

I move like an ape, like a cat with
A broken leg
Shambling around the room so self conscious
Of what that red light means.

Critique! Critique!
Shout out loud how much
You suck at your job
How terrible you are
Quit while you are ahead

Before more damage is done
To fragile students.

Mean

What does this word mean, exactly? Oxford says:
Convey
Intend
Unwilling to give or share
Unkind, spiteful
An average
A condition, quality or course of action
Equally removed from two apparent extremes.

I don't understand why it is mean
To call someone average.
Is there distinction in being average?
In this culture it is distinctly wrong.

I don't understand why we
Are unwilling to give or share.
I do understand intent.
People who are mean mean harm
This is an early lesson.

We sometimes never learn to spot the mean ones
Or we know them but fail to spot their meanings.
I mean to avoid extremes.

Laundromat Sunday

I.
Had to use the quad loader for the colors.
At 8:10 every third machine is taken
But only four people are here including
The older lady in the corner
On the leather chair.
I will have to fight for dryers.
The older lady is always here, never smiling.
She never speaks.
I can't tell sometimes if she is alive.
The quad loader on extract cycle
Sounds like a turbine
Of some enormous beast
Straining to take off with an incredible load.

II.
State of the art front load washers
The sign is circa 1990.
The poster (2005) promises you balance in life
The woman (couldn't be a man) juggles laughing babe,
car keys, clothes and a box of french fries.
Uncluttered minds in a cluttered world
The snack bar is no longer
It is filled with overflow wash, dry and fold.
This man, this owner, knows his business and
Works 12 hours a day.
I see him every two weeks and do not know his name.

III.
Tweaker with phone in one hand
Wash in the other:
                                  You're foolin' me!
                                  That isn't funny!
She is impossibly thin, impossibly less than forty
But trying to look 25.
My single load washing whites is slower
Than the mighty quad loader which
Has speed to match its size. The detergent stained water
Runs down the glass like spilled milk.
The time of drying approaches.
The quad washer spins its last,
Twitching, really.
Light off (wheel stop)
And out the clothes come. 

Experts

Why is it we all know the people
Who drink
                                            a fifth a day
Who smoke
                                            3 packs a day
Who eat
                                            bacon and fatty beef
Who live to be 95?

Everything bad is good for you
Everything good is bad for you
Everything is for you
Good and bad

Live
     They who eat like shit
     Smoke like chimneys
     Drink like fish
Don't care
     About anything but
     Eating
     Drinking
     Smoking

Laugh

What is a good laugh? Does it hurt?
Do you remember the sound
Years later in darker times?
Does it call you back to light
When things go wrong?

The best laughs you remember
The ones that make the sun dance
The ones that make the soul dance
The ones happy cannot describe
Like Mr. Faulkner's laugh
A gleeful living, breathing sound within
A bearded piano tuning language arts teaching
Genius

That laugh meant we had done something special
Brilliant when we did not know our own abilities
In high school we would wish ourselves
Into hearing him.
"Faulkner's Here! Faulkner's Here!"
Shining eyes,
Dancing souls

Hearing that laugh.
 

Bar Riff #1

Ever try __________________ (insert beer here) it
Is damned good fuck they're all good when I can't tell
If I need or want another one.

Can the Sharks not suck for once?
                (The Sharks have been in the playoffs like 8 years in a row)
Can't test that at all but I believe it as
I don't follow the hockey at all anymore, not since
I lived in Washington and watched Don Cherry
in those obnoxious fucking awesome vests
Slightly less loud than his mouth

Daisy, Daisy, friends with the beautiful
Waitress with more tats than her boyfriend who
Looks like a guy from a Flynt fuck flick
With arms like marble from some Italian museum.

If you get sick, man, they'll take your house!
And these people vote Republican!
       I want a million dollars right now!
       It's my money and I want it now!
       IF I FIND OUT THEY FUCKED UP
       I'LL CALL THE LAWYERS
 The cavalry of this age with briefcases instead of guns and suits that make everything right.


                                                                                                                  March 2012   

Bum Sonnet

For Iowa Blackie, National Hobo King 1993

A lonely, warm railroad soul winters down

Among the forgotten educated

Margins of the soft and dirty river town.

His eyes are creased with dances of the late

Summer road. Now a patient stream of words

Thumps from him in a happy hour

Giving the gifts of experience and burns

Which tumble him to rage sweet and flower.

The last I saw of him was hate of me

For cutting him off at the stroke of two.

I said "Get out" with malice rarely seen

And he struck me with such awful truths

I could not bear the sight of him. This life

Is too short, Iowa, to hold such strife.

                                                                          July 1998

On Reading David Lerner

I write
"find, borrow, steal" by his name
in the Anthology contents.
Steal should have been first.
I feel shame being late for his game
But feel better for having
Shown up at all.

These are the best poems I have ever seen
And I read them again and again
Increasing astonishment at the idea
My soul could be so deeply known by
Someone I have never met and
Someone who did not exist until
twenty minutes ago.

Meditation on March 5

So much is correct today, so much is correct.
The sun shines on the spring grass
The clouds are behind the hills and
Will not arrive before work is finished.

So much is correct today
My medication is spent, told to leave
And shown the door.
Myself? I am found, misplaced these years by anger
Misspent in hate, misspent in fear
Misspent in needing everything to be perfect.
Nothing is, but so much is correct today.